US Army Cyber Command & Huntsville Schools Groom Next Cyber-Warriors

A knowledgeable student makes a minor confession (read or listen to the story) in Christine Sutton's cybersecurity class at Huntsville's Grissom High School. Photo by Dan Carsen.

Huntsville, Ala. -- Eric Snowden. NSA code-cracking. Chinese government hackers. It's hard to avoid cybersecurity issues in the news. And many experts think the United States is simply not up to the threats. That's mainly because there aren't enough good guys with the skills to do battle in this expanding arena. But there's a unique partnership in an Alabama school district that's working to change the scenario. WBHM's Southern Education desk reporter Dan Carsen has more:

Department of Defense "threat provider" and guest lecturer Rodney Visser explains a little about what he does. Visser is an ethical or "white hat" hacker, meaning he penetrates networks to expose weaknesses, after filling out all the requisite paperwork and getting legal permission, of course. Photo by Dan Carsen.

"Where would Wikipedia lie?" Visser explains the cybersecurity tradeoffs between confidentiality (importance or secrecy), integrity (privacy, layers of verification), and availability of information. Coincidentally, but perhaps appropriately, those relationships are often envisioned in a "CIA triangle." Photo by Dan Carsen.

Complex subject matter. This, a certain reporter was told, is actually a very simple program left over from an earlier lesson. Students in Christine Sutton's new cybersecurity class will soon be tangling with much more complex algorithms. Photo by certain reporter Dan Carsen.